The subject matter disclosed herein relates to steam turbines and, more particularly, to virtual sensor systems and methods for low cost estimation of sectional efficiencies of steam turbines.
Large steam turbine-generator systems represent major capital investments for their owners and their economic benefit to their owners varies with the thermal efficiency with which the steam turbines are operated. Owners of large steam turbine generators are vitally interested in maintaining the operating parameters of the system as close as possible to the optimum set of operating parameters as designed for the system and/or developed during operational testing following initial installation of the system. In addition, degradation in performance over time can occur due to deterioration of internal parts and other operational causes.
Generally steam turbines are instrumented for controls and protection purposes. However, the standard instrumentation suite for steam turbines often does not include the instrumentation (sensors for temperature, pressure, flow etc.) required for performance measurement on a continuous basis. Therefore, users typically get a periodic snapshot (mostly once a year) using costly precision instrumentation and resources. This also restricts the normal power generation from a steam turbine, and therefore the power plant, because of the isolation and procedural requirements of the precision test.